Second chance romances, a grumpy hero, and women supporting women
Plot:
High school sweethearts Rosie and Dominic Vega have hit a bit of a rough patch if you will. Their days used to revolve around spending time with each other and laughing together, but have now evolved to disgruntled grunts as they pass in the hall and a scheduled once a week trip to bed together. When Rosie’s friends convince her to follow her own happiness with or without him, she takes matters into her own hands and enrolls them in couples therapy with an eccentric hippie. Can she get her stoic husband to open up? Can she admit to her flaws in their relationship? Will Dominic’s secrets threaten to derail their relationship forever?
Review:
As someone who is typically not the biggest on second chance romances, this book started so strong. I initially loved the heroine, Rosie - as she decided to make the changes in her life necessary find happiness, she felt like someone I could root for. But as strong as she was in the first few pages, she folded as soon as her husband, Dominic, who didn’t even speak to her, made a sexual advance.
I respected the storyline of couples going to therapy because I don’t think that is normalized enough and Dominic’s willingness to jump in head first was refreshing. What I didn’t quite understand though was why Rosie picked a therapist she thought wasn’t going to truly help them when it was clear she didn’t really want to let Dominic go. The hippie therapist she chose was definitely an odd choice on Bailey’s part, but I thought she did a good job for the most part balancing his outlandish comments with his actually helpful tactics.
My biggest issue with this whole book was Dominic. As a fan of the tough, brooding and protective characters, he was even too much for me. There were little things that would poke out where I would start to like him for a hot second, like when he would start her car without her knowing in the winter to make sure she was comfortable, but then he would go right back to the land of caveman. Everything about him was too much. He barely spoke, he buried his emotions so far down he could have hit the center of the earth, and made decisions alone that should have been joint choices under the guise that he knew what she wanted and needed when he very clearly didn’t. He is the closest to a caveman character I’ve ever read. Towards the end you did start to see some character development, but personally it was not enough for me to like him.
Overall, it felt like the moral of the story was: if you still want to jump their bones, your marriage will work out, screw communication. If you dig deeper, you can find a couple who cares about each other and wants to fix things, but for me there was too much digging needed to get to that point.
Tessa Bailey is an incredible writer, so even with my near hatred of one, if not both, of the main characters, this story was still enjoyable enough for me to want to pick up more books by her.
Rating:
2.5/5 Stars